


Aft Gang Agley

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: a certain ability to recognise objects under our noses [11]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Racism, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those dynastic marriages come back to haunt Roald and Shinko.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aft Gang Agley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Treanz (Katty)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katty/gifts).



 

            Roald of Conté stands in the wreckage of his daughter’s nursery. He is not an angry or a warlike man; he fought in battle in the Scanran War, but that was to save his country, his people and his family. Still, right now he thinks he could happily murder the assassins who came to remove Prince Roald’s baby daughter from the line of succession, and he hopes that Neal isn’t being _too_ easy on them.

 

            Speak of the Ysandir and they will appear. Neal knocks, then pushes the broken door open – it has holes in it and blood spattered over it, where Shinko was surprised by her daughter’s would-be killers but not so surprised that she didn’t have a shukusen or two out and ready before they could move, because in the Yamani Islands there are always raiders - and moves silently to stand beside Roald.

 

            Roald would ask Neal if he saw this coming, except that Roald knows he did not.

 

            “They’re the Tusaini ambassador’s men,” Neal says finally. “I’m certain of it. They may be calling themselves Tortallans, but they aren’t, they’re just... taking advantage of a lunatic fringe. Give them a night or two in the cells and I’ll prove it.”

 

            “I hope you can, Neal,” Roald says, “or someone will have to explain to my father that his efforts to prevent war from _outside_ his country are close to starting a war _inside_ it.”

 

            Neal snorts, and crushes a fragment of stained glass beneath his booted heel. “I think he’s come to that conclusion himself. With a little help from Mistress Kourrem, who says, in case you were interested, that his heart complaint is under control and that a little guilt won’t do him any lasting harm.”

 

            Roald merely presses his lips together. His memories of Kourrem bint Kemail are sporadic; she never stays in one place too long. But he knows that she served his grandmother, and has cared for his parents for many years, and she was firmly parked on their side during the Scanran War; she taught him what it is to use a limited Gift to save the greatest number of people. He can trust her: it would be politically unfortunate as well as emotionally devastating if his father were to die now. “Liano? Shinko?”

 

            “Well and safe.” Neal sighs. “This is not an isolated problem, Roald. The talk on the streets, the pamphlets... I received a message this morning, before all Chaos broke loose: Duani sends her best wishes, and informs me that a raid on a printing press in Rajmuat produced several hundred posters describing Queen Dovasary as a traitor for marrying a luarin, but also fifteen bundles of pamphlets for export, urging Tortallans to keep the foreigners off the throne.”

 

            Roald bites his tongue. Typical Aly, he sighs to himself, but she’s given him something to work with. “Thoughts?”

 

            “The Yamani ambassador will pledge support. You need it, but sparingly.”

 

            Roald nods. “Express gratitude, but handle with care.”

 

            Neal hesitates. “And perhaps Liano should spend more time with Alan and Lianne.”

 

            Roald nods again. “That’s who they want for her replacement, isn’t it? Alan and Lianne’s children? Or Jasson’s and – he’s in love with one of the Trebond girls, but I’ve forgotten which.”

 

            “Alinna,” Neal supplies.

 

            “I think I should encourage my father to let them marry,” Roald says, not looking at Neal but at the jagged holes in the panel of stained glass that lay above Liano’s cradle. He designed it for her himself: a blue summer sky and a palace set in a forest, like all his best memories of his home. “And to keep Vania in Tortall. And I think that perhaps, while we smoke these rats out of their remaining boltholes, Shinko and Liano should go to stay at Pirate’s Swoop.”

 

            “All sound ideas, Roald,” Neal says, as dry as the desert, “except for the part where you’re not king yet and Shinko will kill you herself if you try to keep her out of this.”

 

            Roald folds his arms and taps his fingers against his elbow. If he were in a better mood, he would be smiling at what Neal had just said. “They’re not unreasonable suggestions, and Father isn’t so wedded to overseas alliances that he doesn’t know he’s overdone it.” He finally does crack a smile. “You’re probably right about Shinko.”

 

            Neal sighs and whistles. “Who’d have known it would come to this? When Kel and I were trying to persuade you lovebirds to talk to each other all those years ago, we never realised what a terrifying team you’d make.”

 

            “I love my wife,” Roald says mildly.

 

            “Yes, and she loves you too, and you have a beautiful daughter, and you’re both as ruthless as only politics can make you,” Neal says cheerfully, and then there’s a knock at the door and both of them are suddenly facing it with drawn swords.

 

            The servant on the other side looks a little surprised, and Roald lowers his sword slightly. “What is it, Teina?”

 

            “Begging your pardon, your highness, your grace,” Teina says, bobbing a curtsey – and someone who’s known him since he was toddling doesn’t deserve to have a sword pointed at her, so Roald sheathes his – “but their majesties are requesting your presence.”

 

            Roald and Neal share a look. It’s important, whatever it is; Roald knows that. It’s just not as important as his baby girl, who is to the best of his knowledge snuggled up in a tent in the middle of the Own’s Royal Forest encampment, guarded by her mother, her aunts, her great-aunt Buri and a lot of displeased men sworn to the Crown, all of them armed to the teeth. She’s safe – Roald thinks she has probably never been safer than she is now. But he _needs_ to see her.

 

            “I’ll make your excuses,” Neal says finally, and Roald nods. Neal’s developed a modicum of tact since they were pages, largely thanks to Yuki and Yuki’s civilising shukusen, so he leaves and ushers Teina out with a couple of thoughtful questions about the servants’ welfare – the assassins went through one or two of the maids and footmen before making it to Liano’s nursery – before Roald goes into the small side-room where a nursemaid sleeps and kisses a very particular piece of panelling. This never fails to make him feel like a fool, but the secret door obligingly swings open, and Roald makes his way down a steep staircase with nothing but a small blue flame to light his way.

 

            He can see sweeping smudges of blood along the floor and trails of it along the walls, where Shinko had a hand out to steady herself, where her skirts had trailed in someone else’s blood, and has to fight to keep his pace level and measured. Someone came to kill his wife and his daughter. He will neither forget nor forgive.

 

            The staircase leads to a door directly out onto the Royal Forest. From the inside, it opens at a kiss, like the higher door. From the outside, nothing short of a direct hit from blazebalm will even scorch it – and that’s if it’s even noticed, under the ivy that has been trained over it. The door is hanging open, with a bloody hand-print on it. Shinko in a hurry.

 

            Roald’s pace quickens. He knows where the Own’s encampment is, can work out the way from here. Half an hour’s brisk walk takes him to its edge and he passes through the sentries without pausing, heading directly to the command tent in the centre. Kel meets him, doubtless warned by her Eldorne friend who seems to be everywhere and who writes Neal some of his clearest reports, and clasps his shoulder. She is sober-faced and serene as usual, but has her glaive to hand.

 

            “Tell me they’re safe,” Roald says, without the usual preliminaries, and Kel nods.

 

            “Here,” she says, turning back to the tent. It’s well guarded, even discounting Keladry herself (which should never be done lightly). Merric and Alan are loitering outside, swords casually drawn; an honour guard of Vania’s Rider friends is lurking discreetly in a loose circle around it, Vania herself presumably perched in a tree somewhere with a bow and arrow, acting as a sniper for the sentries.

 

            As Roald moves forward, Shinko steps out of the tent, and they meet each other halfway, Roald’s hands folding tightly around Shinko’s smaller ones, her fingers closed on his. Her shukusens are tucked into her belt; her dress is bloodstained. There is a bandage tightly wound around her upper arm and a look of ferocious calm on her face.

 

            “Liano is safe,” Shinko says, her voice soft, quick, intense. “I am not badly hurt. _Roald_ –”

 

            Roald gives in to the instincts that are so much closer to the surface in Vania or Jasson than in the older Conté children, and pulls Shinko into a tight hug, one hand cupping the base of her skull, the other around her waist, holding her close, and Shinko breathes in sharply for a second before her arms go around his waist and she settles her face against his neck. He’s startled to realise he’s speaking, whispering sharp-edged words into her ear – _never never **never** will I let them hurt you again, they will **never** come near our girl again, I’ll **die** before I let them touch either of you_ – and she’s talking back to him, a soothing, calming murmur.

 

            Merric concentrates carefully on sharpening his sword, Kel has a quiet and (if he knows her at all) wholly unnecessary discussion of logistics with Alan, and after several long moments Roald reluctantly lets his wife go. There is a faint red flush on Shinko’s cheekbones, but she catches his hands and squeezes them warmly, then draws him into the tent.

 

            Lady Haname, sitting in one corner, sweeps him a graceful curtsey, and Lianne stands from where she is sitting beside his daughter’s bed. Her eagle face is tortured with the knowledge that someone abused her and Alan’s name to do this; he hasn’t seen her so furious and tormented for a long time.

 

            “It wasn’t your fault,” he tells her in passing, and brushes his fingers over his little sister’s shoulder. She relaxes a little, enough to show him how worried she was. He and Lianne have always been more reserved than their siblings, and he knows that sometimes she worries that her brothers and sisters don’t know she loves them. This is a blatant piece of nonsense, but not one he feels able to deal with right now.

 

            “Jasson met us on the road with the news, we came as soon as we could,” she tells him, and he almost ignores her as he drops to his knees beside Liano.

 

            The toddler is unharmed and sleeping peacefully in Kel’s bedroll, her big brown eyes closed, her creamy skin unmarred. He picks her up and holds her close against his chest, hands running quickly and carefully over limbs and torso, just to check; she appears to be wearing Kel’s squire’s tunic, as the smallest clean item of clothing to be found. Haname is repairing tears in her dress already. Two years old, and she has survived her first assassination attempt.

 

            Shinko kneels in front of him, Liano sandwiched between them, and drops a kiss on Liano’s head, stroking her ruffled black hair into some semblance of order. Roald leans forward and kisses Shinko lightly on the lips, and it’s a mark of how scared she was that she just leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes.

 

            “I never thought it would happen here,” she murmurs at last, running her fingers through Liano’s hair. “I thought we were safe. I thought _she_ was safe.”

 

            Roald says nothing, but tangles his fingers with hers and gently squeezes. His parents thought that too, before the hurroks. Are they destined to repeat their elders’ every mistake?                          

            “What do we do?” he says. He has a few ideas, but he wants to hear Shinko’s first.

 

            “Change her ceremonial clothing,” Shinko says without hesitation, but Roald can hear how difficult this is for her, as difficult as it must have been for Thayet to let her children’s K’miri side lapse, and his heart breaks a little for her. He never wanted her to have to do this. “Dress her like a Tortallan girl. Play up her skills in moving between worlds, but root her in the Tortallan one. Vania should teach her to ride, and it should be known that she does so – the people like her.”

 

            Roald nods. His baby sister’s charm and popularity among Tortallans are well-known to him. “And when she is old enough, her knighthood.”

 

            “Yes,” Shinko confirms. “And Kel will teach her how to use a glaive in the meantime.” She is quiet for a moment, and only the set of her jaw betrays that she hates what she is doing – perhaps only five people in the world would recognise that tiny sign for more than slight perturbation, and Roald feels honoured that he is one of them. “But she will still speak Yamani.”

 

            “Perfect Yamani,” Roald asserts, even though he will have nothing to do with it because his Yamani is barely passable.

 

            They fall silent together for a moment, Liano snuggled between them, and Roald wishes that they could be a family, just them, together, without anyone else to make things difficult for them – why couldn’t he have been a merchant’s son? Someone with enough wealth and status to smooth the way, but a blank slate for a name, and no politics except by choice. Someone whose father’s deeds did not haunt him.

 

            As ever, Shinko seems almost to read his mind. “We cannot choose the times we live in,” she says, voice full of practicality, and lifts Liano out of his arms and back into the bedroll. The child fusses, but Roald quiets her with a hand on her forehead and a murmured reassurance; how long will he be able to do that for her?

 

            He meets Shinko’s eyes; there’s a question in his, an answer in hers. They stand up, and with the formality that has marked out the limits of his life Roald offers her his arm. She tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, and then looks at Lianne and Haname.

 

            “Please – don’t leave her,” she says. “Either of you. I trust you.”

 

            Roald has never seen Lianne look so touched; Haname simply meets Shinko’s eyes with her usual ruthless loyalty, and bows her head. Roald nods sharply. He trusts them, too. Haname would die for Shinko or Shinko’s children. Lianne would die for any innocent she chose to protect, and she not-so-secretly adores Liano.

 

            They walk out of the tent with their heads held high and one thought in their minds (because a few years of marriage is good for that, when you’re essentially so alike): _we will never let this happen again_.


End file.
